IndieWorks: October Recap & Upcoming Halloween Series

in

This October, we decided that one IndieWorks event just wasn't enough! Take a look at October 2nd's recap and more. In the spirit of the season, we have another screening at the end of this month on Oct. 30th! Check out the details below.

 

 

The awards go to...

At the end of the evening, we announced our winning filmmakers for both Audience Choice Award & Silver Whiskers Award. The Audience Choice Award is voted upon by all those in attendance, and the Silver Whiskers is judged by the CongestedCat Team based on a system rating 8 categories of Story, Dialogue/Writing, Direction, Acting, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, and Production Value. It goes on to screen at our end of the year Best of Fest event.

For the October 2013 lineup, our winning filmmakers were:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Fictional Me, Fictional You" Directed by Hannah Leshaw.

    Silver Whiskers Award:  "The Secret Friend" Directed by Flavio Alves.

Check out the trailers to both films here:

 

Special Halloween Series - Oct. 30th

Our next upcoming event is coming up in just two weeks on October 30th! The night is going to feature six films themed in horror, thrillers, dark tones, and gore! The event begins at 7:30 at People's Lounge & Bar in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Doors open at 6:30, so stop in early to grab a drink and mingle with other filmmakers enjoying the evening. 

Official Summit Teaser Trailer, Too.

We're planning to reveal a new teaser trailer of the film at the next IndieWorks event on Oct. 30th, as well.

Over a year ago, we were in pre-production of our first feature film, "Summit". Since then, we succeeded in a crowdfunding campaign led by Christina, who wrote/directed/produced the film. We then spent two long, dedicated weeks on-location in upstate New York and Massachusetts during production with an amazing cast & crew. It's currently still in post-production and we'll be keeping our friends & followers up to date online at www.summitthemovie.com.

Be sure to be at the event on the 30th to get an early peek at the trailer before anyone else!

Christina's Script Wins Award at NY Screenplay Contest

in

My TV Pilot Script for "The Randoms" has won the Empire Award in the Sitcom division of the 2013 New York Screenplay Contest!  

 

Screen shot 2013-09-21 at 3.52.13 PM.png

"The Randoms" Logline: Sally, a 37 year old single woman, with an intrusive family, soon realizes her life will never be the same after she becomes a House Mother to a group of international college girls. 

The series is a dramedy I came up with & wrote the pilot for back in December of 2010 for a TV Writing Class (which is also where I became friends with Kelsey & Ryan). I've revised the pilot a few times since & I've written a bible mapping out what the whole first season could be (and even where it could go after that). It's a series I originally wanted to try to get in the hands of Netflix execs when they were first talking original programming. With all celebrity-driven series now being picked up, that prospect seems less realistic. But it's still the ideal platform for the show. So I'll keep submitting the pilot script around and hope to get it in the right hands one day. It also made Official Selection at the 2013 Las Vegas Comedy Fest and made the Semi-Finals of the 2012 NEXTV Festival!

If you're interested in reading it & helping get it optioned, feel free to send us a message. 

 -Christina

Kelsey: Episode 1

in ,

Just before 9pm Tuesday night, we premiered the very first episode of our new web series 'Kelsey' titled "Palette Cleanser"!  

Screen shot 2013-09-12 at 10.55.40 AM.png

As I said in my last post, our promo trailer was released on August 20th and got a ton of views from our already existing fans anticipating the show as well as new ones that came from being featured on OneMoreLesbian & AfterEllen. We got over 3,000 full plays and the hits slowed down after the first 2 weeks. But then, on September 7th, we were featured in the BuzzFeed article 8 Lesbian Web Series You Should Have on Your Radar! The article & trailer were exposed to over 60,000 people and in less than a week we got over 5,000 full plays! We've now made it past 9,000! And we're still getting a lot of hits daily! Being on BuzzFeed is not only a huge deal because of the exposure but also because there are at least 5 other lesbian-oriented web series that have been out much longer & have a decent following that could've been on that list, but we made the cut! That's so awesome! 

That momentum carried over to our premiere on September 10th and we instantly started getting hits. The amount of positive feedback we got was overwhelming. Comments on facebook, private messages (from some who discovered the series only through BuzzFeed), to even comments on sites that featured the episode, like AfterEllen, the PNT Tv Network & Autostraddle! People have been quoting the episode & reaching out to tell us how much they loved it. The response has been amazing and is only getting better! Kelsey & I, and the rest of our team, are so excited to see the series resonating & connecting with so many different people and it's only been 1 episode! We actually got our first bit of negative feedback on AfterEllen last night, and that's cool too because we know that the show wont be everyone's taste. We also know that the amount of people who like it and get it and want more will outweigh the ones who don't. And, most importantly, we know that a little criticism isn't a bad thing because it gets people talking & debating, which generates more traffic to the page! So if you really wanna help us out in reaching more people, comment! Share what you liked, what you want more of, what surprised you, and maybe even what disappointed you. We wanna hear it all because we're just so excited to be able to share this series with you! 

Now the numbers you want to hear & the ones we're REALLY excited about. In the 38 hours that the 1st episode has been live, we've gotten a total of 1,313 full plays!

Screen shot 2013-09-12 at 11.03.05 AM.png
Screen shot 2013-09-12 at 11.20.15 AM.png

And the hits keep going up with every hour! Kelsey & I have turned into crazy people who just hit refresh constantly. I kinda feel like I'm back in spring of 2012 when I was running my Kickstarter for 'Summit'. But really, the support is amazing. So thank you to everyone who's watching & sharing the show! To our first fans who were anticipating the show while we were shooting all summer, to the new ones who found out through word of mouth or our recent press coverage, we're so grateful and cannot wait to give you more of Kelsey & her friends! 

Episode 2 will air in 2 weeks at 7:30pm on September 24th. We've decided to air the first 5 episodes bi-weekly and then the last 5 (of Season 1) weekly after that, in order to make sure we can have all the episodes as polished as we'd like. It'll always be Tuesday at 7:30pm. We're gonna try to keep the updates & inside info fresh & fun between episodes so that you don't forget how much you definitely want to come back for more! Speaking of which, here's an interview I did with 3 cast members, Daniel, Brennan & Lauren, with the weekly interview-based web series Cinema Couch. It was a kind of spur of the moment thing at an industry party. Also, we plan to go live with KelseyTheSeries.com before the 2nd episode; we'll be posting about that over the coming days on social media. But in the meantime, it will continue to redirect to our blip channel.

So be sure to tune in on the 24th & keep sharing the 1st episode! We've been reaching out to press recently and are crossing our fingers that we'll have more good news to share soon! Just please keep supporting us, the show wouldn't be anything without an audience to share it with!

Thanks again, 

Christina